heating options — wall heater or ????
Hi all,
We have just built a 440 sq ‘ room attached to the back of our garage. The room has a slab floor and a vaulted ceiling.
The room will be used as an office, but primarily will be used as a “lab” for my husband who tests and builds high end audio equipment. The room was designed for acoustic optimization.
Because of this, we need a quiet heat source. Our experience (in the past) is that wall heaters rattle and ping/pop as the metal expands/contracts. Does anyone have any experience with VERY quiet wall heaters? Are there other options for us? We were considering radiant baseboard heat, but understand that this is very inefficient. Does anyone have any experience with the new Fujitsu ductless system? How bout an infrared portable furnace? We can put a small furnace in the adjacent garage and duct it in, but from my research, they don’t make furnaces that size and the cost is very expensive (4K). Seems like a lot of money to heat 440 sq’ 2 or 3 months out of the year.
We are completely befuddled by heating options. We live in San Jose, California, so it does not get “that” cold, but still we will need to heat the room.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Replies
What about a small gas stove.The kind that looks like a wood stove. They are atractive. They make no noise as long as you don't have a unit with a fan, which you won't need for that small a room. They can vent up or out the side wall. I have a Jutol which I love and use to heat about 1000sg ft. Cost was around $1800 plus another $300 for the vent pipe, not including installation.
I would definitly not install a ventless gas heater.
That is an interesting idea and one I had not heard about. My general contractor is really only familiar with furnaces, so I will run this by him. Is this something like a fireplace or fireplace insert that runs on gas? Will it be enough to warm our room? Do you have to light with a match or is there an ignition? Is there a way to control the temp? Sorry for all the questions, but I am clueless on this stuff and am trying to educate myself quickly on all of the options available to me. I'd like to keep the cost under 2k. We were considering baseboard radiant heat but was told it was very inefficient.
Who told you that radiant baseboard was "inefficient"? That's ridiculous. Do you have an existing hydronic system?-------------------------------------
-=Northeast Radiant Technology=-
Radiant Design, Consultation, Parts Supply
http://www.NRTradiant.com
My contractor told me that. I also had read (again trying to read everything I can, cause I'm clueless) that unless the slab was built for radiant heat, the base board heaters would mainly heat the floor and not fill the room (vaulted ceiling). I also heard (not sure if it is true) that it takes a LONG time for the room to warm up. The room is not so big 440 sq ' and our climate of Northern California is not so cold, but I'm getting information that this is not the way to go.
I don't think I have whatever system you asked about. Never heard of it.
Thanks for your input. I'd appreciate learning more about the costs and effectiveness of this type of heater.
Any of you have any experience with a Ductless Type Heat pump. I was given this website (below) and tried to understand it, but don't understand what is involved. I'd be interested in learning about 1) how it works 2) how much does it cost 3) what is involved with installation and 4) whether or not it is quiet.www.fujitsugeneral.com
I guess I'm not sure what you're reading. Radiant anything, including baseboards, heats objects, not air, and in vaulted ceilings it is most efficient because of that fact; if you heat air, it goes up, and you have a hot ceiling and cooler ground area. That stratification is not efficient at all, and radiant minimizes that stratification. Bear in mind radiant baseboard is not the same animal as regular fin-tube convective baseboard.*Any* heat in this area will have to heat up your slab over time. The slab will continue to draw heat from the room until its temperature is equilized.. that's basic thermodynamics, heat travels from hot to cold, always. Radiant will do this faster than simply heating the air will, and will do it better, since it beams heat to objects instead of just heating air.That said, if you don't have an existing forced hot water heating system, it would be pricier to do radiant baseboard. If you already have a boiler, then adding a zone to your system absolutely makes sense, and radiant baseboard or panel radiators would be an excellent choice.-------------------------------------
-=Northeast Radiant Technology=-
Radiant Design, Consultation, Parts Supply
http://www.NRTradiant.com
My guess is that you and the original poster aren't speaking the same language. You're in the northeast, where radiant implies hydronic. She's in SoCal, where hydronic is unheard of. I think she's talking electric radiators, and electric radiant floors. Which may or may not be inefficient when you consider transmission losses, but which are expensive to run in many places. And she's right about electric radiant underfloor mats being intended only to warm the tootsies.
Given that it's SoCal though, just how much heat do you need? It's not like it ever gets what a New Englander would consider other than balmy there.Andy Engel
Senior editor, Fine Woodworking magazine
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value. --Robert M. Pirsig
None of this matters in geological time.
/me peeks out of his sheltered world of all radiant heating/me looks aroundgosh.. sure is different out here, isn't it ;)I bet you hit it on the head. Thanks Andy!-------------------------------------
-=Northeast Radiant Technology=-
Radiant Design, Consultation, Parts Supply
http://www.NRTradiant.com
I think I must be confused. Ok, so the building we have is a small room attached to a garage. It will be used as a music studio. I think when I said radiant baseboard, it meant something else to you -- I was just thinking of those things around the perimeter of the the room.
What I have been told is that it takes a long time for the room to heat up and basically, we would need to have it on all the time. Maybe efficiency is the wrong term. I live in Northern Ca where a winter day may be a brisk 50 degrees, so I don't want to have the heater on all the time because our 50 degree days may be followed by a week in the upper 60's.
I just want to find something that is quiet and can heat my room. We have no previous systems, boilers, furnaces etc in the room. I'm on a budget.
We had bad previous experiences with noisy wall heaters, but am open to that option if there is a quiet one.
Sorry for the confusion.
Me too! Hope you're not getting too frustrated. Out of curiousity, how is the room used? For long periods of time, on a daily basis? Occasionally, for a few hours at a time?-------------------------------------
-=Northeast Radiant Technology=-
Radiant Design, Consultation, Parts Supply
http://www.NRTradiant.com
Great question about how the room will be used.
I work from home about 2-3 hours a day, when I (and my trusted friend, the computer) will be the only one in the room. Noise is not so much an issue with me, but because I am on the phone all the time, I don't want something that is constantly rattling, pinging or popping.
I imagine that in the evenings and weekends (though not every evening/weekend), my husband will use this as his "laboratory" for designing and testing his latest and greatest audio inventions -- that is when the room will need to be quiet.
A third use of the room will be for the family and friends to listen to music/watch TV and play latin drums-- kind of a "playroom" -- again the noise of the heater would not be so much of an issue at that time. Great question, it helps me to put it down on virtual paper.
Also, as this will serve as our "home office", we will use it in the evenings for email, paying bills, and playing games.
Its a free standing stove. Made of heavy iron its decorative and looks like a woodstove. It has glass doors and you can see the flame. It runs on a thermostat and has a pilot light. My Jotul is 81% effiecent. The stove come in different BTU ratings(size) and I'm sure the smallest would be plenty in your case. The good thing about ehm is that they add a nice warm look and are complately quite.
check of the Jotul Nordic which is rated to heat up to 600sg.ft.http://www.jotulflame.com/qt.html"The purpose of life is rapture. Here and now"